Why $15/hr for fast food workers just doesn’t make sense

Flipping burgers for the same wage as a teacher is silly. Jobs are paid in line with their value and this is low-value work, so instead of complaining about your job, aim higher if you want that comfortable wage.

Matt’s thoughtfully crafted article is an excellent rebuttal to the orders of fast food workers. Jobs are paid commensurate with their implicit value and as Matt elegantly puts it:

So, real talk: Your job isn’t worth 15 bucks an hour. Sure, as a human being, you’re priceless. As a child of God, you’re precious, a work of art, a freaking miracle. But your job wrapping hamburgers in foil and putting them in paper bags — that has a price tag, and the price tag ain’t anywhere close to the one our economy and society puts on teachers and mechanics.

A staggering number of highly-qualified and educated workers are earning less than $15/hr. Living comfortably is indeed an aspiration and not a right. It takes years of hard work to earn yourself a decent, well-paying job and Matt’s point about fast-food wages not being comfortable is a good one: it’s not intended to be comfortable. It’s intended to be a stop-gap, or filler work while you’re studying a vocation where you can earn that comfortable wage.

There’s no doubt in my mind that working in fast food isn’t pleasant or enjoyable, but I side with Matt when he suggests that they should use that frustration to aim higher instead of trying to wobble the economy by suddenly ballooning wages for a vast number of people who do a low-value job. By increasing their wages, cost goes up, demand goes down and people lose their jobs. It’s a good of an idea as the Federal Reserve just printing extra money.

Related

Author: Dave

Dave is many things. Most importantly, he's a husband and a father to Ellie and Jack. Almost as important, he's British (though he lives in Florida). Following on from there, he's a WordPress developer and civil engineer, has an unhealthy love of hummus, is vegan, likes cider, wants to travel to Iceland and Japan, loves solving puzzles and is a realist.
View all posts by Dave